The Biochemistry Core is being established to address a growing need by the individual projects for protein isolation and structural characterization. This core has evolved out of a portion of the previous Project 2, "Biochemistry and Differential Expression of Melanoma-associated Antigens". As our methods for analysis of the small amounts of proteins that are available from melanoma and melanocyte cell lines have improved, they have developed to the point where most required procedures are now relatively routine, although they remain highly sophisticated and technically demanding. These resources have evolved to the point where they are more appropriately placed in a Core as opposed to a basic research project. In addition, the need for these biochemical analyses by multiple projects is steadily expanding.